1941 Retro Hugo Nominee Changes Announced

“Darker Than You Think” by Jack Williamson was mistakenly categorized as a novelette. The story is a novella, but did not receive enough nominations to be a finalist as a novella. It has been marked as not eligible. The novelette “Vault of the Beast” by A.E. Van Vogt (Astounding Science-Fiction, August 1940) should have been listed as the 5th finalist and has been added to the Retro ballot.

Anyone who has already registered votes for the Retro Hugo contest online is encouraged to update their ballot as they feel appropriate. Members voting by mailed in paper ballot may write in “Vault of the Beast” and rank it, the administrators will count their ballot appropriately.

McCarty reports the ballot change is live now.

Members will receive notification in a mass email later today, which will include an electronic edition of PR#3 with an updated version of the ballot.

According to hp lovecraft.com it was published in Scienti-Snaps summer 1940 issue and the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction defines it as a fan publication. The other possibility would be in Polaris which I couldn’t find an entry on.

If “The Very Old Folk” is the only eligible Lovecraft for 1941… that’s awful. Lovecraft has been hugely influential for me in many respects, not just my extreme xenophobia (I kid!), but man… that’s not one of his best. That’s not one of his mids. It reads like JCW-written Lovecraft fan-fic, leaving out the surface features one expects from Lovecraft, but making sure to leave in the squinty-eyed asiatics. Gross.

But man, I don’t mean to make my critique about Lovecraft’s casual racism – I know that’ll make the trollpups howl in glee. The thing that sucks about that story is that it is a shitty story. It’s a bare skeleton of a Lovecraft story. It reads like a band’s very, very early demo, before they’ve found their lead guitar or drummer (the main dude thinks he’s the lead guitar, but he’s not really up to the job). You hear it after already knowing the band’s output, and you think “oh, yeah, wow, that’s an interesting progression, from demo era to now.” You hear it before you’ve ever heard the band’s mature output and you stop it halfway through the first song and never listen to it again.

“The story is a novella, but did not receive enough nominations to be a finalist as a novella.”

I wonder how it would have done if it had originally been properly categorized. It seems to have been a well-received story.

I was going to look in the nominating reports for other Retro Hugos, to see if in general Novellas got more nominating ballots than Novelettes. But I don’t see any reports for Retro Hugo awards at the hugoawards.org website. This is odd, because the constitution says that “Procedures [for Retrospective Hugos] shall be as for the current Hugos;” (sec. 3.13) and the procedures for current Hugos includes statements that “complete numerical vote totals . . . shall be made public by the Worldcon Committee within ninety (90) days after the Worldcon” and “the nomination voting totals shall also be published” (sec 3.11.4). I read this as a requirement for nomination and vote totals reports for the Retro Hugos.

So have Retro Hugo reports been made, and I’ve just not found them? Or have the Retro Hugo-sponsoring Worldcons been remiss in not publishing them? Or am I misinterpreting the rules, and there is not a requirement to make public the totals?

I wonder how it would have done if it had originally been properly categorized. It seems to have been a well-received story.

What do you mean by ‘originally properly categorized’? Works aren’t categorized before the nominations.

I suspect that actually what stopped it reaching the shortlist was a kind of ‘accidental slate’ effect – a lot of the same people will have voted for the three Heinleins, and likewise a lot of the same people for the two De Camp/Pratts. It might well have reached the shortlist under EPH.

Regarding the publishing of the nominating and voting totals – in practice, those are published at the end of the Hugo ceremony, as releasing the information earlier than that would tend to interfere with people’s suspense and enjoyment of the event.

Regarding categorization of works….it is not uncommon for nominators to nominate a work in the wrong category. The Hugo Administrator generally corrects those nominations as long as there is the ability to do so on the nominators ballot. If something was nominated as a novelette and should have been a novella, the nomination may be moved as long as the ballot does not *already* have 5 nominations for novella…as nobody is allowed 6 nominations in a category.